


it takes an ocean not to break

by redbells



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: AU, F/M, WIP, post-AWE
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-19
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-21 13:49:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/225883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbells/pseuds/redbells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth, after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. all my ships have sailed

The _Dutchman_ vanishes in a flare of green light, ethereal and otherworldly, gone in the space between heartbeats. The dark shadow of the _Pearl_ takes longer to disappear, slipping out of sight where the sea meets the sky. In the end they are both gone, and Elizabeth is left staring at an empty horizon.

Standing alone atop the cliff, her bones feel impossibly light, bird-hollow, as though she’ll blow away on the wind. It knifes through her, gusting cold and sharp, and she shivers.

She flew once before, face pressed tight against Jack’s chest as the wind bore them away from the drowning _Dutchman_. But Jack is gone, and she has no wings. Only a chest, all her love and her longing tucked away inside it.

It is an anchor in her arms, a heavy, beating weight that shackles her to this small island. She has borne it less than a day and already it seems an impossible burden. She cannot imagine a lifetime on this desolate spit of land – endless years of waiting, growing old and bitter – and finds she does not want to.

For a wild moment, she leans into the wind, and hopes.

She does not blow away.

It is the first of many disappointments.


	2. caught in the riptide

She buries the chest that night, after the ships have sailed away. The tide crashes in against the shore, a noise strangely in time with the beating of Will’s heart. She can feel it pulse though the chest, beats echoing hollowly in its wooden prison. 

The sound scares her down to her bones, terrifies her in a way that cursed pirates and krakens and the rage of the sea herself could not. By the time she has clawed out a shallow hole in the sand, hidden away in a cavern at the island base of the cliff, she is numb with badly contained fear. 

Her breath comes in sharp gasps, ragged and wheezing. She hates herself for being afraid, but finds she cannot quell the terror. The air stinks of blood and rotted wood, thick and cloying. It makes her gag, and she chokes on the fear welling up inside of her. There is something inherently wrong about the chest, a dark, eerie feeling the makes her skin crawl.

_This heart should not be beating. Will should not be alive._

A horrified sob breaks free from her at the thought, and her mind conjures an image of Will lying dead on rain-slicked decks, a blade buried deep in his chest. 

Fear and grief war within her, and she is overwhelmed. 

She buries the chest and stumbles out the cave, crying. Whether from terror or despair, she cannot say.


	3. no easy passage

She leaves the island. She cannot stay, not with memories of Will lingering like restless ghosts. Not with the heart buried shallow in the sand, every beat a condemnation.

_You are afraid. Will is dead. You are afraid._

She tosses fitfully in her sleep the night before she leaves, caught in dreams where she can feel the whole island pulse in time with the heart, see Will’s face etched with lines of sorrow at her fear. Elizabeth wakes with a scream choking in her throat, and she cannot leave fast enough.

It is two days’ passage to Shipwreck Cove, and rough seas batter the small dinghy Jack insisted she have. He caught her arm before she left the Pearl, uncharacteristically solemn, and met her eyes for a brief moment, no glint of trickery or charm in them.

_‘Never stay in irons unless you have the key.’_

She hauls against the oars, numb with exhaustion, and finds she has no energy to wonder how he knew.

Elizabeth steps onto the main dock bone-tired and shaking, and is not surprised to find Teague waiting. He sketches a bow in deference to his King, looking so like Jack that she starts. Nodding in recognition, she does not question why she is the only person who does not know her fate.

Her limbs feel strangely heavy, her ears full of cotton as she moves away from the dinghy. Like father, like son, is her last thought before the world grays out, and she stumbles. Calloused hands catch her, and she sinks into darkness.


	4. port in a storm

She wakes to the fragrant aroma of pipe smoke, tangled in silk sheets that catch on the rough pads of her fingers. She has not slept on such finery since Port Royal – only the plaintive notes of song creeping through the hazy room remind her that her old life is gone.  
  
Teague is sprawled across a chair opposite the bed, fingers lazy on the strings of his guitar. A portrait of indolence, save for his hawk-sharp gaze, he watches her sit and rub the sleep from her eyes, waiting for her to speak. His hands still on the strings as she gathers herself, and the silence that falls is thick and heavy.  
  
She speaks just to break it, her voice raspy, harsh with exhaustion and terror and a grief she has not yet allowed herself to examine.  
  
“How did you know?”  
  
His grin is wry, curving around the stem of his pipe. “Done a lot of living in my time, dear King.”  
  
A non-answer. It shouldn't surprise her, not when he and Jack are so obviously cut from the same cloth. 

Perhaps if she weren't so worn, she would have some witty response, something to dim that spark of knowing laughter in his eyes. He looks so like Jack. Or Jack looks so like him. 

She turns her head away. 

In the silence, his hands find the strings again, absently coaxing another melody from the old instrument. The song is as melancholy as the first, and it makes something within her ache. She recognizes it, though from where she does not know. She leans back against the pillow and listens, watching the smoke curl lazily in the still air. The song is too full of heartache to be a lullaby, but her eyes flutter shut all the same, music bearing her back towards the shores of sleep.  
  
“More like my Jackie than you think, Miss Swann.”  
  
She is asleep before she can tell him that her name is Turner.


End file.
